1776: Whose republic? (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Republic of Washington will grow and grow, until it makes the whole world tremble’ – Marquis de Sade.

In American schools children are taught to call it the American Revolution. Was it? In Britain we were brought up to refer to it as the American War of Independence. But whose independence?

The man mostly urging the colonial owning classes to declare independence from the British crown was an Englishman: the political reformer Thomas Paine. Largely alone in his zeal for the independence of the American commercial class, he would be resisted by the much more timid George Washington and the latter’s clique of slave-owning mouthpieces for ‘liberty’, who were reluctant to go so far, until forced to by circumstances and the sheer ferocity of the British army.

The colonial gentry had launched the cry against imperial taxation and oppression in 1775 and Paine, for whom dissent, anywhere, was an irresistible magnet, became its most zealous spokesman. In his pamphlet aptly named Common Sense he showed the absurdity of the American colonies being ruled by a tiny island kingdom a gigantic ocean away. When the people of his own roots, the pacifist Quakers, warned the rebels of inviting carnage, Paine told them to mind their own business and not interfere in a ‘just’ war (where have we heard that before?).

Oppression is oppression, regardless of who the oppressor is, and Paine was soon to learn this, with the ingratitude and disdain of his supposed colonial ‘comrades’ after they had at last yielded to his urgings that they replace the British rag on a pole with a republican one.

American farmers and ordinary people bore the brunt of British ferocity as the Quakers’ warning came true.

British ferocity, directly caused by the Washington revolt, did indeed provoke a hatred that benefited those riding it and carried them to victory and the overthrow of British rule. War continued, however, beyond 1782 (its official end), with the British navy attacking towns and shipping and in turn put to flight by an American known (ironically) as Captain Nelson, called a pirate by the British. As late as 1812 Britain launched an invasion of the new United States of thirteen colonies, and hostilities would carry on until into the American Civil War of the 1860s.

During the war the British state used the native American Great Lakes tribes against the colonists in the same way that earlier in the century the Jacobites (the political faction supporting the Stuart monarchy of James II) had done in Scotland. Robert Burns did not like the Jacobites, but he admired the tribal Highland people. As his song Ye Jacobites By Name suggests, they stirred up rebellion, seducing the Highlanders to their cause, then, when it failed, scarpered off to France, leaving the Highland people to suffer the vengeance of the British state.

The Jacobites did this twice in the 18th century, and the last time they scarpered, in 1746, it would result in the destruction of the Highlanders who had followed them. The clearances would have been on the cards anyway at some point, because, like the native Americans and other native peoples around the world, the clans were an obstruction to the development of capitalism.

So who benefited? For all the talk of ‘liberty’, certainly not the United States’ four million African-American slaves, no matter how hoarsely and painfully Tom Paine and others implored. The poor farmers’ subsequent revolt, demanding relief from poverty, and stressing their having fought for the Congress, was ferociously crushed. The British during the war had helped secure the later fate of the native people too, using them against the colonists, teaching the natives about scalping, and ensuring the colonists’ eternal hatred for ‘Indians’.

As for Paine, his dedication to George Washington of The Rights of Man did not help him when arrested for ‘moderantism’ by the French Jacobins. Washington ignored his appeals to save him from the guillotine (for that he had to rely on others) while The Age of Reason – a rational dissection of the Bible –finally sealed his fate where the United States of America were concerned.

In short, 1776 marks yet another murderous squabble between capitalist factions. Revolution – the world revolution of those who actually do all the work in society – is yet to come, and when it does it will be truly democratic and thus will not require violence.

A.W.

American independence and its mythology (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776 is upon us, it seems like a good time for socialists to assess this momentous event. Marx, in contrast to his writing on the American Civil War, has little to say about the conflict other than that he saw it as progressive but unresolved until the North’s victory over the South in 1865.

Although we have little interest in the international and internecine struggles between members of the bourgeoisie, what of the claim that these events on the east coast of North America constituted a revolution? If so what kind of revolution and was Marx correct as seeing the transition of 13 colonies into a nation-state as a progressive event in respect of the long-term aim of socialism? A cynic might suggest it was the capitalists of both states and their hatred of paying tax that generated the conflict between them. That the early USA was almost entirely dependent on slave labour for its wealth does make the shouts for liberty and justice rather hollow and hypocritical but then the international bourgeoisie have always been masters of myth creation and, as ever, it falls to Marxist socialists to try and separate myth from reality by stripping away the ideological overgrowth.

By 1763 the British had succeeded in expelling their French colonial rivals from North America but in doing so they had all but bankrupted their treasury. To maintain a series of forts to protect the victory was expensive and Parliament resolved to raise the revenue to pay for this by a series of taxes that regulated overseas trade on the 13 colonies. The colonists, on the other hand, thought that they had done their fair share of fighting to help the British defeat the French and saw no reason to pay for the honour. The climax to this came with the implementation of the hated ‘stamp act’ which was the first direct tax imposed by the British.

In 1763 the British had also forbidden any further expansion west because, for one thing, they feared the cost of going to war with the native Americans. However, the colonists saw the west as ripe for land speculation and they proceeded to create a ‘general assembly’ in the same year to oppose these British measures under the slogan: ‘No taxation without representation’. In response London passed a series of ‘quartering acts’ that imposed British troop garrisons in many of the leading towns with the added insult that the locals should provide them with food and shelter. Boston erupted and British ships were confiscated, whilst embargoes were placed on imports and exports to the ‘old country’. This was an act of rebellion against the crown which resulted in an invasion of Boston in 1768. Boston became a hotbed of rebellion with constant tension and violent skirmishes which in 1770 climaxed with the infamous ‘Boston Massacre’ in which many colonists were killed. Riots followed including the famous ‘Boston Tea Party’ where British ships were looted and their cargoes destroyed. By now the Americans had begun to create armouries for what they regarded as an inevitable war. On discovering the location of one of these a British army marched on Concord to seize the armaments but were confronted along the way at Lexington by a colonial militia and the first battle of the war took place.

The war was to last until 1781 when the British surrendered at Yorktown to the Americans and their French and Spanish allies. The colonists had won their independence but what kind of state would they create and was it in any way ‘revolutionary’? The propaganda against Britain had portrayed it as a feudal autocracy when, in fact, the King and his aristocrats (both old and newly created) had been capitalists for a good 100 years before the rise of merchant capitalism in the new world, and parliament was the final arbiter of policy.

The American economy was mainly based on the labour of chattel slavery and people like George Washington lived like ancient Roman patricians on massive slave estates. So in its formative years the republic saw very little change from the perspective of the black slaves and the poor white farmers. Britain was well into its ‘industrial revolution’ and was a much more progressive state than its new competitor. Most of the signatories of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ were slave owners who, apparently, saw no hypocrisy between the claims of liberty and justice for the white elite and the reality of life within for hundreds of thousands of enslaved inhabitants.

Thomas Jefferson began his political career opposing slavery but ended it as a racist bigot of the worst kind. In North America the conjunction of slavery and skin colour became enshrined in the American psyche and even after the ‘emancipation’ at the conclusion of the civil war many of the formerly enslaved became ‘share-croppers’ – in effect, little better than medieval serfs. America had progressed from chattel slavery to feudal serfdom. This kind of racism was to fuel the genocide of the Native Americans and so preserve the racial and political violence embedded deep within the culture which survives to this day. Of course, socialists are not surprised at the depths of bourgeois hypocrisy but the American oligarchs seem to have taken it to another level claiming that they have no empire and that their state violence was always in ‘defence of democracy’. Perhaps the origin of their state is one of the reasons for the US’s continual political backwardness? If 1781 was revolutionary it was an extremely reactionary revolution more akin to the Third Reich and its genocidal and slave-economy policies than to the English and French revolutions.

Many historians regard the relationship between the founders’ support of slavery and their call for liberty and justice as some kind of paradox; they shy away from the truth of the origin of their country being founded on a lie. It can be said that the absence of any mitigating counterforce to the free market capitalism embraced by the oligarchs made it possible for the northern states to invest millions of dollars into industrial technology and so become one of the most powerful economic powerhouses by the end of the nineteenth century – in that Marx was correct; but what he didn’t foresee was that this extremely technologically advanced country would not also enjoy a commensurable rise in working-class political consciousness. Consumerism, religion and nationalism would prevent any important political evolution and has led to the kind of authoritarian ‘king’ figure that America now endures. The world longs for the end of the murderous American imperialism which seems, at last, to be within sight. Its birth in violence, racism and genocide and the malign shadow that has forever haunted America as a result might finally destroy it. No doubt it will be replaced, in the absence of socialist consciousness, by an equally rapacious capitalist global empire of some kind. ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ will have to wait until people realise just how to make what was and is now just a platitude into something meaningful and real.

Wez.

Past Class Struggles: The American Revolution. (1919)

From the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 15th century the minds of the merchants in the rising European commercial States were agitated by the attempts to discover another way to the East Indies, for the customary caravan routes across the Continent of Asia were threatened, and in some cases completely blocked, by the growth of Arabian and Moorish power. Portugal, through Diaz and da Gama, tried round the Southern part of Africa, while Spain sent Columbus across the Western waters.

Columbus eventually reached America, and the land he discovered is thus described by Prescott (Prescott’s Works, edited by John Foster Kirk) in his “Biographical and Critical Miscellanies":

  All around was free,—free as Nature herself: the mighty streams rolling on in their majesty, as they had continued to roll from the creation; the forests which no hand had violated, flourishing in primeval grandeur and beauty: their only tenants the wild animals, or the Indians nearly as wild, scarcely held together by any tie of social polity. Nowhere was the trace of civilized man or his curious contrivances. . . The only eye upon them was the eye of heaven. (Page 127)

The dealings of Columbus, the slave trader, with the natives of this virgin land is a record of fraud, cruelty, and force perpetrated on innocent, generous, and credulous savages. As the immediate pecuniary gains from his discoveries did not satisfy those who financed his expedition, Columbus frequently offered to send to Spain cargoes of the natives to be sold into slavery.

The colonists who followed in the track of Columbus were Court adventurers and companies of merchants, who were granted tracts of land with almost unlimited rights of settlement, being empowered to make their own laws, etc. The settlements were originally on the Eastern coast, but could be extended, if desired in strips right across the continent to the Pacific coast.

From the beginning the attitude of the colonists toward the innocent savages was one of cruelty and rapine, as the following quotation will bear out (in Reference to Rayleigh's settlement on Roanoke Island, N. Carolina, 1585) :

   Treachery and cruelty, however, marked the brief existence of even this first English colony; a leading Indian chief and his principle followers were massacred by pre-concert at an audience at which no sign of hostility was shown by the Indians.—“War of American Independence,” Ludlow, p. 27.

As the new land was opened up the settler commenced to do a roaring trade with the mother country, and the need for workers arose “Voluntary emigration ceased in 1685, and the only additions from England to the white population were by means of transportation and kidnapping, the latter practised chiefly from Bristol.” (Ludlow, p. 31.) “Kidnappers as well as slave buyers, the colonists broke the treaties with the Indians, harried them with commandoes, and sold them as slaves to the West Indies.” (Ludlow, p. 36.)

The history of America up to the period of the Revolution is the record of the rise to enormous wealth of a land-owning, slave-holding, and trading autocracy. The property qualificacation excluded the workers from the vote [and the same was true long after the Revolution), all wealth and power being in the hands of the wealthy class.

During this time there were frequent revolts of the oppressed, all of which were ruthlessly suppressed by the future advocates of eternal liberty.

The enclosure of the common lands in France, Germany, and England gave rise to a multitude of starving outcasts, some of whom turned their eyes toward the New World in the hope of finding an amelioration of their lot. These provided ready material for the kidnapper and emigration agent, who enticed them across the Atlantic and then sold them into a species of slavery (indentured service) even worse than the slavery of the blacks.

The records of the American white slave traffic exhibit an almost unbelievable barbarity. This traffic is fully discussed by James O’Neal in “The Workers in American History,” where the worst evils of Negro slavery are shown to be paralleled if not surpassed by the system of indentured service.

Of course, the followers of the “meek and lowly one” had to have a finger in the pie, and we read that—

   The famous Whitfield, and the two Wesleys, visited America at this period (1743) and urged the expediency of allowing slavery. (Ludlow, p. 38.)

In his “Story of the Negro” Booker T. Washington points out that the white man sold his own people in America years before the first black slaver sailed into Jamestown, Virginia (1619).

These, then, were the conditions from which the wealth of America had arisen.

When the English capitalists realised what a prize was within their grasp they tried to keep their hands upon it, and in doing so, overreached themselves. Navigation laws were passed confining to English vessels, navigated by Englishmen, all importation into and exportation from the colonies, and even forbidding any importation of European commodities except those commodities coming from England.

Subsequently a further Act was passed forbidding all colonial staples to be imported otherwise than to England, so that a duty equivalent to the English customs duty was laid on the importation of such articles from one colony to another. Says Gibbins:

   It is quite obvious, apart from any consideration of national policy, these regulations were dictated by the class interests of British manufacturers and merchants. (“Industry in England," p. 366.)

All these restrictions, however, failed in their object An extensive contraband trade developed and American smugglers waxed wealthy.

It was the time when the great inventions were revolutionising industry in England. The production of wealth in prodigious quantities was commencing, and the world lay waiting to absorb all the English manufacturers could produce. So we can guess with what consternation they viewed the attempt of the Americans to produce and export on their own account, instead of remaining producers of raw material for English manufacturers and a dumping-ground for British manufactures:

The revolution commenced with some skirmishes in Boston and the upsetting of the East India Company's tea in Boston harbour. For some time this vast company was on the verge of ruin owing to the large stocks of tea and other Indian goods on their hands. The English Government magnanimously (!) agreed to accommodate the Company by taking off as much duty in England as would make the Company’s tea cheaper in America than any foreigners could import. This struck a mortal blow at the smugglers. The latter were consequently roused to righteous and indignant action, and stood right sturdily for the “Rights of Man” by throwing the pernicious tea into the Atlantic.

Washington, one of the principle figures in the Revolution, prior thereto was engaged in surveying land, and O'Neal states that on the eve of the war a case was pending against him for illegal surveying. He was also deeply involved in the white slave traffic. His “poverty” may be estimated from the fact that he offered to raise and equip at his own expense a force of 1,000 men to relieve Boston.

Benjamin Franklin also was not above turning a honest penny in the slave traffic.

The delegates who had been chosen for the Philadelphia Congress of 1774 “Had known what it was to breakfast in a villa on the Hudson River with a very large silver coffee pot, a very large silver tea pot, napkins of the finest materials, plates full of choice fruit, and toast and bread and butter in great perfection. But in Philadelphia . . there was magnificence, and, above all, abundance, under many roofs. 'A most sinful feast again,' John Adams wrote, 'everything which could delight the eye or allure the taste. Cards and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands, and whipped sillabubs. These dainties were washed down with floods of Madeira.' ” (Trevelyan, vol I., p. 225.)

Such were the poor down-trodden whose souls the times were trying (according to Thomas Paine), and who proposed vindicating the Rights of Man! Another comic tragedy was in process of production upon the stage of history. In relation to the above it is well to remember that the vast majority of the population at that time (excluding Indians) was composed of poor whites and slaves both black and white.

To prosecute the war the English proceeded to engage German mercenaries and disaffected Americans. By the offer of freedom to indentured servants they attracted many to their ranks' so that the rebels were compelled to offer the same inducement.

The stock jobbery and wrangles of the English capitalists, in the attempt of each to make the war as lucrative as possible to himself, put England out of the running from the start. On the American side similar jobbery prevailed. I will quote Washington’s own words:

   Such a dearth of public spirit, and such want of virtue; such stock-jobbing, and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military arrangement, I never saw before, and I pray God's mercy that I may never see again. (Trevelyan, Vol. I., p. 403.)

His letters during the war are full of similar complaints. All along he complains of the enormous desertions, sometimes of whole regiments. and of the difficulty of getting recruits. High bounties had to be offered by the different States before the various armies could be raised, and immediately their term of service was up they departed.

On both sides the aid of the Indians was extensively employed, and they were urged on by bribes to acts of the greatest barbarity. 

The gentle refinement of Washington, the glorious example of American schoolboys of today, may be judged by the following:

   During the summer (August and September, 1779) a terrible revenge was taken on the Iroquois for the Wyoming massacres by General Sullivan, who with 5,000 men devastated their whole country between the Susquehannah and Genesee rivers,—covered, we are told, with “pleasant villages and luxurient cornfields"—burning every village, giving no quarter. At one village, which is termed the “metropolis of the Genesee Valley," no less than 160,000 bushels of corn were destroyed. The Indians were pursued as far as the British fort of Niagara, and Indian agriculture was destroyed throughout the district. The total American loss did not exceed 40 men. The responsibility for these cruel measures lies at Washington's own door. His instructions to General Sullivan (May 31st) were “that the country may not be merely over-run, but destroyed." (Ludlow, p. 164.)

At length England agreed to evacuate America. It is noteworthy to mention (bearing in mind the much-vaunted Rights of Man) that one of the articles in the final capitulation stipulated the restoration of slaves and “prohibited the British from carrying away any Negroes or other property of the inhabitants."

Such was the great American Revolution. At bottom it was a fight between the privileged class of America and England to decide who should enjoy the wealth wrung from the slaves of both colours.

In early times to have imported free workers into America would not have sufficed for the needs of the privileged class, as the workers would have spread far and wide and gained their subsistence without working for a master. Hence workers had to be introduced in two particular forms of servitude (chattel slavery and indentured service) which tied them to their particular masters for a definite period or for life.

Long after the Revolution these forms of servitude continued. When economic development had rendered wage labour possible and more profitable, then the old forms of slavery disappeared.

Gilmac.